Wow... I leave the thread for the night and come back to find a full-fledged haymaker!
Seriously, as far as what I have working vs. where I would like to go:
I actually have Tricons talking to two different HMI system; GE Cimplicity and Citect. Both HMIs have their good and less than good points, and overall the decision to use one over the other is a toss-up. These were originally integrated in by two different groups at their respective locations before I took responsibility. Both systems are working well, with the common thread beeing that both must use OPC (we use Matrikon) to poll data from the Tricon hardware. That said, we have spent a lot of time honing the DCOM needed to achieve communications across a network between the OPC servers and the HMIs. It is working, and working well; but that did not make it any less of a pain to configure. There are also the licensing costs, not a huge factor, but a factor none the less. As we add, replace or upgrade HMI workstations, updated OS requires a change in configuration of the OPC and DCOM as well as the HMI; just more stuff to do!
Our ultimate goal from a configuration standpoint is to standardize on one package or set of packages. If I can do that by incorporating an HMI that does not require OPC, while still giving me connection reliability in a mission-critical application, I am all for it.
There have been a lot of good discussion points brought out here in the past 12 hours; believe me, I am weighing them all. Thanks to all who have expressed their views!
Seriously, as far as what I have working vs. where I would like to go:
I actually have Tricons talking to two different HMI system; GE Cimplicity and Citect. Both HMIs have their good and less than good points, and overall the decision to use one over the other is a toss-up. These were originally integrated in by two different groups at their respective locations before I took responsibility. Both systems are working well, with the common thread beeing that both must use OPC (we use Matrikon) to poll data from the Tricon hardware. That said, we have spent a lot of time honing the DCOM needed to achieve communications across a network between the OPC servers and the HMIs. It is working, and working well; but that did not make it any less of a pain to configure. There are also the licensing costs, not a huge factor, but a factor none the less. As we add, replace or upgrade HMI workstations, updated OS requires a change in configuration of the OPC and DCOM as well as the HMI; just more stuff to do!
Our ultimate goal from a configuration standpoint is to standardize on one package or set of packages. If I can do that by incorporating an HMI that does not require OPC, while still giving me connection reliability in a mission-critical application, I am all for it.
There have been a lot of good discussion points brought out here in the past 12 hours; believe me, I am weighing them all. Thanks to all who have expressed their views!